1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a network search engine which provides search results in several forms, including a video only form, a text only form, an icon form, or a combination of media form types, including text and/or icons and/or multimedia. The search results can be multimedia only, with the user having the option of playing the entire multimedia search results item, or skipping to the next entry, etc. Alternatively, the search engine can display search results in a user's choice of text, or icons, or both with the ability to selectably display multimedia items. The system provides the searcher with the capability of first examining an introductory data item, such as an icon representing a multimedia file presented on the search screen, to determine whether to link to the Web site associated with that multimedia file. Once the searcher selects the icon, a multimedia file is streamed to the search results screen. After viewing the multimedia file, the searcher can then elect to link to the Web site which presented the multimedia file. The search engine provides for the integration (i.e., “plug-in”) of streaming broadcasting signals and/or their file names, multimedia files, Web pages or domain addresses on the Internet or on any other public or private global computer network. The multimedia data platform is format independent in that it can present multimedia files having a variety of data formats, such as commercially available MPEG, AVI, etc., formats.
2. Background Art
With the advent of very large global computer networks, such as the Internet, individual users have an enormous amount of information available to them. Unfortunately, there is so much information available that it is difficult to locate the items which may be the most pertinent in terms of the user's interest. In response to this problem, a variety of search engines have been developed to assist users in locating the information they are seeking.
However, search engines are not charities. They are run by companies which seek to make a profit for the service they provide. Because they have always been the busiest sites on the Web, entrepreneurs were prepared to invest in search engines at the outset on the theory that a high-volume of traffic could be used to generate a revenue stream. As proprietors of search engines sought ways to generate revenue from the traffic at their web site, they found that direct payment by visitors was unpopular and would result in a substantial loss of traffic. As a result, search engines inevitably turned to alternative ways of earning revenue. One of the most effective methods of generating revenue is through advertisements placed on the Web pages. Search engines have found that companies are willing to pay for advertising space for a variety of services, such as placing the company's brand names on the web portal's screen and/or through the use of banner advertising. However, a disadvantage associated with this strategy is that Web users dislike advertising which impacts performance by consuming communication bandwidth. Another disadvantage associated with this type of advertising is that in difficult economic times, such as occurred with the collapse of many Internet companies, advertisers were reluctant to spend substantial amounts on banner advertisements. As a result, the generation of advertising revenue through direct placement of advertisements on search engine Web pages has become more difficult.
With the decline of advertising revenue from direct placement of advertisements, the operators of search engines have turned to alternative methods of charging website owners a fee. In particular, Web site owner's seeking to direct traffic to their sites are willing to pay search engine operators in return for boosting their rankings in search results. As a practical matter, an advertiser's ranking in the search results is critically important since it directly relates to the probability that the searcher will actually get to the advertiser's entry in the search results, and potentially visit the site. Likewise, the lower an advertiser's rankings are, the less likely it is that a searcher will visit their site.
The practice of paying for placement enables companies to ensure higher ranking for their sites than they might objectively deserve. Because of its effectiveness, the practice of paying for enhanced ranking position rapidly became widespread. Unfortunately, this practice introduces a substantial imperfection into the frictionless marketplace that the Web could become, because millions of naive users are being frequently directed to sites which have paid a premium for preferred placement, rather than to sites which may have more pertinent information. In theory, the Web makes it possible for customers to locate the best supplier, but it can only deliver on that promise if the search process is objective. When search results are artificially distorted by the paid alteration of ranking results, the Web is unable to deliver the best search results for the searcher, and instead becomes a tool for entities with more resources to effectively monopolize the marketplace. In addition to the use of artificially altered rankings as they relate to direct sales of products, paying for placement in search results also distorts the Web as a medium for the unfettered dissemination of ideas. For example, if powerful institutions such as governments and large corporations can influence the outcome of Web searches, they can effectively ensure that some voices are rarely heard.
A recent substantial change in Web use has been the rapid shift in the use of the Web by television broadcasters. Due to rapid increases in communications bandwidth, there is an increasingly large audience for high bandwidth Internet television. This usage is growing exponentially and represents an opportunity for television broadcasters to greatly expand their reach to the ultimate consumers of their products. It would be advantageous to have a method which allows an individual to have easy access to a multitude of broadcast outlets from a single Web portal. Today, there is intense competition by the developers of video content over video and multimedia standards. As a result, the current versions of these formats are often incompatible and the market suffers from their incompatibility. It would be desirable to have a network system capable of providing the necessary structure and application system to allow the various developing technologies, which are otherwise incompatible, to function together and provide rich new media, video, and multimedia content, and which further could be simultaneously presented as search results via a single search engine.
Another change in the nature of search engines has been the need to handle multiple types of data, in particular, video data. Recently, video producers and digital creators have witnessed a remarkable transformation in the tools that have begun to flood the current marketplace to create new content. Ten years ago, the ability to work with video data was reserved for those with access to high-end professional digital facilities. Today, digital video camcorders, personal computers and software tools can provide high quality content and production capabilities for a relatively nominal cost. When the personal computer was introduced, it was difficult to imagine that it would have such a profound effect on the professional video production industry. Those most threatened by this new technology argued that new tools running on off-the-shelf computers would never match the capabilities of the proprietary computer “Black Boxes” which were typical of the pre-PC year. They were wrong and we are now entering an age of video workstations. It would be desirable to be able to use the powerful new video technologies, which are now available today by both advertisers end-users, when they're using search engines.
For nearly two decades, the personal computer revolution has been riding an exponential growth curve, enabled by the phenomenon identified by Moore's Law, which postulates that the number of transistors available to a chip designer will double every 18 months. This has resulted in the development of nominally priced notebook computers which offer digital video production capabilities to virtually anyone. In addition, the multimedia products generated by these machines can be used on the Web by anyone who has a Web site.
Today we live in the infancy stage of the convergence of multiple media types. As a result, video data is now just another form of information. Anyone with the capability to produce video can also acquire a channel from a station that provides video streaming capabilities. The network broadcasting business is no longer defined by traditional broadcast platforms. It would be advantageous to have the ability to deliver any type of broadcast data on the Web and to provide traditional broadcast media via an entirely new technological area for delivery of their product. More importantly, it would be very advantageous to provide this video data as just another type of data that is presented as the result of a search.
One problem faced by Web sites is that the meta tags used by search engines today focus on text based information. Of course, a principal advantage of global networks, such as the Internet, is that they allow the transfer of large amounts of data through video or multimedia information. By focusing on textual data types, conventional search engines fail to take advantage of the inherent information rich media, which data types such as audio, video, and multimedia, provide. Currently, there are no meta tags specifically designed for use with icons, URLs for streaming multimedia data, or multimedia audio tags. In order to make this type of data available to search engines, the search engines would first have knowledge of, and access to meta tags specifically designed for those types of data. Unfortunately, these meta tags do not exist at present. It would be advantageous to provide a search system which is able to use multimedia meta tags that allow the search engine to search different types of multimedia data, and to provide a search results list that contains any combination of text, icons, audio, video, and/or multimedia.
Another disadvantage of conventional search engines is that they typically provide a list of potentially interesting sites with links to those sites. Unfortunately a substantial amount of time can be wasted in the linking process, only to find that the site which was linked to is of no interest to the searcher. Not only does linking to the Web site waste time and effort, sometimes the site which is linked to does not allow the searcher to return to the search list. This causes an even greater waste of the user's time by disrupting the search, which may have taken considerable time to execute; and, which now may have to be re-executed from the beginning. It would be advantageous to have a search engine that allows the searcher to examine data, including multimedia, audio, and video data from a potential linking site without actually leaving the search results Web page.
While the prior art has attempted to provide a variety of methods to search the Web, it has failed to provide a multimedia search system which provides meta tags to allow the search of multimedia, audio and icon data in addition to the text data available by conventional search systems. It has also failed to provide search results containing multiple data types, including text, icons, video, audio, and/or multimedia data into the search results list. It has failed to allow searchers to preview data (which may be an advertisement or information or promotional multimedia files) associated with linkable sites prior to linking to those sites. In addition, it has failed to allow search results to be presented in a variety of formats, including a conventional search list, or a multimedia search list that provides video as part of search results, or a multimedia network platform that uses a numeric index to access data.